Monday, November 3, 2008

Not much to say about this, just stumbled on an interesting article about a nutrition lesson involving a McDonald's hamburger. The burger is from 1996 and still looks like the day it was made if you ask me. Just some proof that there are too many damn preservatives in our pseudo-foods we ingest these days. Check out the article at http://bestwellnessconsultant.com/2008/09/23/1996-mcdonalds-hamburger-karen-hanrahan-best-of-mother-earth.aspx (once again sorry, blogger.com's link feature doesn't seem to be working *sigh*)

Monday, October 20, 2008

People will try to auction anything that resembles a face I suppose. It is a natural human tendency to find faces in things, it stems from our infant development, faces are one of the first things we recognize, really all it takes is two dots and a line. But someone is auctioning off a starbucks blueberry muffin, so well, if that's your thing, then you should rush off and bid on it. Check out the full story at: http://www.bayraider.tv/2008/10/evil-face-starb.html

An 88 year old woman that didn't want to return a child's football that kept landing in her yard actually had charges pressed against her for petty theft. Interesting story I thought, I guess the era of the evil old lady that won't put up with your crap is over. Check out the story at: http://www.neatorama.com/2008/10/20/88-year-old-grandma-arrested-for-not-returning-kids-ball/ (again sorry for a text link, blogger is not posting links when I put them in.)

I just ran across a little piece about how at the Western Carolina University that somebody shot a bear to death, and people placed Obama signs on it. First of all, I thought there was only a North and South Carolina, but besides the point. It's an interesting little story that I found at http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2008/10/20/2021650-dead-bear-covered-with-obama-signs-found-at-school (sorry for text link, blogger isn't adding the link for some reason). Anyways, check it out for yourself. I was highly amused at the first comment however, "Palin strikes again". EL OH EL

Well I just saw a commercial for the new season of celebrity rehab. And I was like all hyped up, OHHH YEAH GARY BUSEY, my favorite crazy, I dug his antics on Me & Busey, at least I think that was what it was called, and his awesome shenanigans on the red carpet randomly grabbing and hugging people he has never met. So I was like, of course, Gary Busey, he's all effed up. But well, now that I've done some research I guess my image and what I was going to post was a tad premature. Apparently he's been clean and sober for about 13 years now, and he's on the show for support. Nothing says support like a manic freak that might try to snap your neck at any moment. But anyways, the new cast is semi-interesting I suppose. Jeff Conway is back with his mumbling and well, I dunno, is there much of a brain to save in him anymore, at least the American public will be pleased, since they love people that are more miserable than them. There's some girl from American Idol that didn't win that I really don't recall, Nikki McKibbon. A model for eye candy Amber Smith. Guns n Roses Steven Adler, which I always thought had a kind of neat comatose swagger to him. And Rodney King. Maybe he'll ask 'can't we all get along, and hit this bong'. Anyways, it will probably end up the same as last season, at least with me, unwatched. But it's interesting to see the makeup of the new season.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

yeah. well only a select few really read this blog, but yeah, it's just been insane with school and other things happening, been writing so much, I'm just usually not in a very writing mood once I'm done with it all. But will make an effort this week to throw out some more oddities.

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Indiana Jones co-star Shia LaBeouf (la buff la boof?) was arrested this morning in Hollywood for drunk driving after getting in a three car accident, one in which he was the driver. Despite his claims that Bumblebee was doing the driving for him he was charged with drunk driving (just kidding about this part). Formerly a Disney star, on the show 'Even Stevens', this is not the first time he's gotten in trouble for hitting the bottle a little too hard, LaBeouf was arrested after running around drunk in a Chicago Walgreen's. Just the latest in a string of the drunken misadventures of former Disney child stars (ie Lindsay Lohan). Maybe there is a sense of entitlement when you become a Disney kid where you think it's OK to drive around drunk. Who knows? Well they say there's no such thing as bad publicity. Maybe he'll get a shot at Celebrity Rehab or something. On a personal note I was in Hollywood yesterday, but came home around one. Shoulda stuck around a while longer, I wouldn't mind getting hit by a celebrity, I could use the money.

Friday, July 25, 2008

I have run across a couple articles (first one I saw was on Ananova, click here to see it) in the last few days, and there seems to be a new fashion trend out there. No, it's not paying an extra 20 dollars for a shirt that looks "used" (distressed I believe is the term). No, it's wearing fish. Not just any fish. Live goldfish. Many have condemned it as cruel, but that's not stopping it from being all the rage in China. Basically they are necklaces with fish encapsulated within them. Inside there is fish food, and oxygen balls to keep them alive. They can supposedly survive for three weeks inside the necklaces. The companies selling them say you can break them open and release the fish before they meet their demise. Personally, I find this a bit cruel. I mean, who wants to live in a little 2 inch bubble anyways? Reminds me of the wonderful craze of fish inside platform shoes ala the 70s. I mean what's next? Kitten belts with live kittens taped to you?

Sunday, July 20, 2008

A New York man is seeking $1 million dollars from the Subway corporation. He claims he found a knife baked into his bread on his cold cut trio sandwich. This is not the first claim of its kind. In recent months a boy claims to have found a rusty bolt baked into his bread. Spokesmen for Subway say that food safety is of the upmost importance to them. The lawyer of the man who is suing says she's looking into whether this may have been an intentional act. On a personal note I've been craving Subway since I see those five dollar foot-long ads on television. Maybe it is my body's way of telling me I need more iron in my diet.

Well, one of the games I was going to post about was Mythos. Truly one of my favorite games lately, I've been on the beta test for it about 4 or 5 months. It was a fun game, pseudo diablo style. I dug it. Today when I tried to log in though, I discovered that Mythos servers were down. Flagship studios who also made Hellgate: London has severely cut staff and shut down their operations to take a "hiatus". Which is unfortunate, because they just completely retooled Mythos and I was really getting into it. Here is a letter from Max Schaffer over at Flagship Studios:They say it's not so much the destination as it is the journey that's important. We're really hoping that's the case around here these days. I can't really believe I'm writing a post like this, but here we are faced with the unpleasant task of taking a hiatus from this crazy project. Unlike most games, Mythos has been running with our testing community for almost its whole life. I really feel like we've all done this together. And despite this bump in the road, I think we've succeeded wildly. This is undoubtedly the best game community I've ever seen. This is the best game development team in the world, in both Seattle and San Francisco. The things we've learned here, and with you all, will be with us forever.

PC gaming is changing, and I believe we've had a sneak preview with Mythos. With any luck, this will not be a long hiatus, and Mythos will be back. But even if it's not, and even if we all move on, we've taken a lot of important steps forward. Game development is in many ways a continuum, and we all build on what came before. I know neither Travis, the great Mythos dev team, nor myself are planning on doing anything but make games into the future. So no matter what, we'll pick up where we left off and you'll be hearing from us shortly. We may not be the best business people on the planet , but we know how to make games. And once the dust settles here, that's what we hope to get right back to doing as soon as possible. So until then, aux revoir Mythos community! It's truly been a privilege to have experienced this with you.

Max Schaefer, your humble executive producer

I hope they bring back mythos eventually. It was fun, it was free, it was an mmorpg, as their tagline says.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Osaka in western Japan is the scene of an evacuation. Floods? Fires? What would cause authorities to evacuate 5,400 residents? A six foot long, one ton bomb is what. An old World War II bomb left in the ground, unexploded more than 60 years ago. Just as in 1974, one of the last Japanese soldiers, Hiroo Onodo surrendered, having not accepted the war as being over, these bombs definitely don't know when the war is over. This is actually a common thing in Japan, a bomb was found back in March in the outskirts of Tokyo. It is also not an uncommon thing in the world at all. A Virginia man in May was killed trying to restore a still active cannonball from the Civil War. People still discover active mines left over from the Civil War. War leaves us little presents everywhere. Although standards of using mines have altered over the years, Afghanistan is still dealing with the over million mines left over from their conflict with Russia. On a regular basis in Afghanistan people lose life and limb, so it's no wonder Kabul has one of the most advanced prosthetics programs in the world. Unexploded bombs and mines are found throughout the world. Aftermath from war, devices that have no loyalties and don't pick sides. Our legacy and gift to the next generation.

We live in an age of mash ups. Everything from mixing songs together, to combining activities normally thought divergent, to putting pepsi in our cokes O.o ! I ran across an article on Time today that talks about the emerging sport of Chess Boxing, so I knew I had to look into it some more. You heard me right. Chess boxing. There are a couple of different leagues. In the United States there is the Hip Hop Chess Federation, in Europe they have the [World Chess Boxing Organisation]. One of Hip Hop Chess' (Chess's? Chessi? Chessoooo?) biggest fans is none other than RZA from wu-tang clan. The way chess boxing normally works is it runs in three minute boxing rounds followed by four minute speed chess rounds, with 1 minute breaks in between. Some have hailed this as a great program, an intellectualizing of martial arts and boxing. As described on the Hip Hop Chess Federations homepage "We recognize that chess, martial arts and hip-hop unify people from multiple cultural, religious and social backgrounds." I'm all for unity, so let's break out our gloves and our boards.

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

There are those of us that have pointer fingers that are rippling with raw power and muscle, all thanks to the web browser plug in Stumbleupon, or as we stumblers like to call it, just stumble, or stumbly joe, sometimes when I'm drunk, I call it sweety pie cutie stumble. But that's me, you know. Anyways, I got up today, checked my news feeds, and then set myself to do a little stumbling. Lo and behold! Sweety pie cutie stumble was down! There was a nifty little picture, advising me to go outside and play. I panicked. I began to hit my stumble button over and over again. Same thing, a maintenance page. How could they do this to me? Maintenance, baah! Give me my wonderful random pages. I envisioned a world where I stumbled not onto a page where I could rate whether I like it or not, send it along to people on my friends list on stumble, and where instead I stumbled into the sunlight. My pale skin burning under its gaze, while masses of stumblers poured onto the streets, like zombies, clueless, darkness bleached, staring in awe at things like other people, and flowers and clouds and things. Would their release from the evil clutches of mindless stumbling cause the roads to become clogged with people seeking real life entertainment? Would people be in libraries pulling random books off the shelves, flipping to random pages and saying 'I don't like it'? Would people be outside taking pictures of everything they saw, so they could come home and put phrases like 'I has a flavor?' on pictures of cats they found on the streets for their lol fixes? Luckily, about 30 seconds later it stumbled it's first page to me, a charming little flash animation about balancing [nine bowls of soup] on your head. For those of you unfamiliar with stumbleupon, it's really a great little application bar tool for your browser, and I have discovered some of my favorite sites on it. Click here - www.stumbleupon.com to check out the stumbleupon homepage.

I don't know why I like this site so much, but I do. It offers you two lines on an LED sign that are on a periodic webcam capture. You can actually have strange short conversations on it. It's pretty fun. For a subscription fee you can change the bottom line of the sign, but I dunno, seems frivolous. Anyways, it's kinda neat, check it out. Sometimes though you have to hit refresh yourself. Click here to go to the LED sign page.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

New Brunswick Canada, A truck carrying over 12 million bees in 330 crates were released when the truck tipped over on one of Canada's busiest highways. It was raining at the time, and bees don't like rain, so the majority were flailing around aimlessly on the ground. Local authorities were reluctant to handle it themselves and called in some bee experts. However it is not likely that the bees will survive. [end of real story] Local children took advantage of the situation by bringing out their slip n slides. "It tingles!" local child Billy said. Even adults were taking advantage like Jean Tucows, a local cosmetologist, she says "it's cheaper and less detrimental than botox!"

Well this story fits in perfectly, since it involves a dog and a cat. In Greenacres, Florida an interesting story played out. A south florida woman Linda Urioste had lost her dog "Scooby" and it was put into doggy jail by the local Animal Care and Control unit. Five days later a new family the Jutta's had adopted the dog. They renamed the dog "Buddy" and a few days later Linda Urioste had inquired at the shelter about her dog. When the Jutta's found out that she was looking for her dog, they were more than willing to give the dog back, until they met Ms. Urioste, who screamed and yelled at them, treating them very unkindly. So the Jutta's decided not to give the dog back. However, Ms. Urioste decided the best course of action was to steal the Jutta's cat! Ms. Urioste left a message on the Jutta's answering machine "I was the used-to-be-owner, but I was wondering if you were missing a gray pussy cat. Because a pussy cat ran out in front of my car not far from your house and I saved its life. I almost ran him over. So, I was just wondering how you are enjoying Scooby, because I am enjoying your pussy cat while he is in his crate. You call it crate, I call it a cage. Have a nice day,". (source: http://www.wpbf.com/news/16758597/detail.html) She was keeping their cat as ransom for her old dog. Urioste was arrested and charged with theft and extortion. I can't help but feel somewhat sorry for Urioste for losing her dog, but she doesn't seem like she's sane enough or nice enough to give that dog a good home, so maybe Scooby/Buddy is better off? I dunno, anyone have any thoughts on it?

Sunday, June 29, 2008

Personally, I don't know who I'm going to vote for in the Fall. But, I, like many other Americans, really take pride that for once we have an option other than some old white rich male for president. But as a country, we still have racism seething underneath our banner of "land of the free". First we had the Obama monkey t-shirts, representing Barack as curious george, something which the creator of the shirt said had no racist connotations, but well, I was offended. Now people are printing buttons and t-shirts with the phrase "If Obama wins, will it still be 'The White House'". Now there's a stamp on some of our bills with the truncated phrase "Let's keep the White House white!". Shame on you, whoever you are that's doing this. America should be it's promise, where "all men are created equal". In an age where foreigners think of us as fat, lazy, and racist, why can't we accept that we are all human, and prove them wrong.

Last Saturday at Six Flags over Georgia a 17 year old boy was killed after he climbed two sets of fences to get under the Batman roller coaster. There were plenty of warning signs such as "Danger" "Danger Zone", "Do Not Enter", "Authorized Personnel Only" along the way. But the boy went anyways. Friends said he was trying to retrieve something he lost. When he got over the second fence, the ride hit him (at 50 miles per hour), and took his head off. This isn't the first time that this ride had killed someone either. Back in 2002 an employee was under the ride and got killed when someone's leg hit him in the head. Also, this is not the first series of accidents resulting from a superhero themed ride. At another Six Flags in Kentucky back in the beginning of the month. A 16 year old girl was riding the Superman Tower of Power (a freefall ride), and a cord wrapped around her feet on the way down and severed her feet from her body. So the question that's in my head is, are these so called "good" superheroes taking revenge on the public? WHY BATMAN WHY!

Well I've been reading for a while now that the honeybees are dying off. I've read everything from climate change to cell phone towers scrambling their brains. While some people think 'oh well, i don't like bees anyways, they sting, they smell bad, they borrow my car and don't fill up the tank'. This is really an issue people should pay more attention to. Bees pollinate the majority of plants and flowers on our planet. So what happens if they die? We starve basically. What can we do about it? Haagen Dasz has a website (click here) to save the honey bees. If you want to read more about the honeybee crisis, click here for a good article.

Well it's finally happened. Scientists now have the right to say "I TOLD YOU SO!". The North Pole is getting extremely close to losing all its ice for the summer. While we may still get freezing in the winter months, summer will most likely completely melt all ice at the North Pole. Check out CNN's story on it. Click here.

Well the Microsoft deadline is up. As of Monday June 29th XP has been cut out of the Microsoft lineup. While they will still offer support and updates for Windows XP until about 2012 (probably not after because the world is ending, lawls), most manufacturers and stores will no longer offer or carry Windows XP. I am one of those old XP cronies that refuses to give up XP, mostly because I don't want to buy more ram and a better video card, and have a fear of using Vista (mostly because of all the negative things I've heard). So for now I'll be sticking to my XP still (and ubuntu on my laptop), I suppose Vista is in my inevitable future. Maybe I can outwait it until Windows 7 is released. Here's a link CLICK HERE to an interesting story about software product "life cycles". I guess nothing good lasts forever.

13 year old Jake Roberts apparently hung himself after he got a new wii and couldn't play it immediately because his sister was watching TV already. Although it's not thought that it was intentional, the young boy died of asphyxiation from hanging himself with his school tie in his room. Amazing how far we will go in America when we don't get instant gratification. Click here for full story.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

So locals have known about these frogs for years. But now that the white man has discovered them, it's news. These frogs have a nifty little defensive mechanism. When they are threatened, the bones in their fingers, which are sharp and pointy, literally rip through their skin so they can tear you up. Interesting little evolution device. I wonder if it hurts when they do it? It's kinda like wolverine eh. Hope it doesn't sting too much. Click here for full article. Click here for another article.

This thing is the greatest. I have an obsession with lolcats, which I don't like to admit, but they are great. So I found a translator, in case you want to learn to type in lolcat bad grammar. It's actually a pretty nifty little app. click here to check it out.Besides just that site, there is a great page that translates entire webpages into lolcat pages, replacing images and translating text. CLICK HERE for a lolcat version of this page! or CLICK HERE to translate any page into an lolcat page.

Not a bad idea if you ask me. I've read a lot on the subject of ethanol production, and I've heard different sides to it. I've seen a few posts where the claim is that corn based, and especially switch grass based ethanol production actually uses more than a barrel of oil to produce a barrel of ethanol. Which makes sense if you trace it to all the farm equipment used to plant, maintain and harvest crops. So if seaweed can be used to produce ethanol, I don't see why not. Seaweed is known to grow as much as six feet a day, so it seems like an ideal crop. Also there aren't the connotations of raising food prices, and all the economics behind the big corn boom. Anyways, click here for the article.

So North Carolina apparently issued about 10,000 license plates with the letters WTF starting the license plate #. The DMV is offering to replace the plates for anyone that wants to. Personally, I would be stoked on having that license plate. I can't even make heads or tails of mine, and often forget what my license # is. Makes it hard to check into seedy motels. :D Anyways, full story click here.

There are all kinds of service and charity organizations out there. Like this one. Puppies behind bars. I don't necessarily know what to think of it. It's a program to give Golden Retriever and Labrador puppies to inmates to train the dogs as explosive sniffing dogs, and service dogs for the disabled. I understand the disabled part, but I don't know, how fair is that, getting stuck in prison for the first two years of your life and when you get out, you have to look around for stuff that might blow you up. lol, anyways, here's the site http://www.puppiesbehindbars.com/

For some reason this amused me highly. The only thing I wish you could do with this site is edit every panel for something to say. But anyways, yes, if you're a Dilbert fan, which I'm not so much, I mean I get a laugh now and then, but yeah, yes you can edit the last panel of the latest Dilbert cartoon on the Dilbert site's Mash Up page. Me, I just kept making filthy jokes. Click here to check it out yourself. Here's a screen cappy of me doing one.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Interesting video. Imagine being handed over to the care of the state, or basically, to an orphanage, while you are still alive. In Indonesia, parents can give their children up if the pressures of poverty are too much to take. Check out this video. Click here.

I always thought that maybe Finland was a peaceful, fun loving place. I associate it with the grooviness of dutch countries. But a Finnish man actually purposelly hacked off an ear of one of the Maoi's ears on easter island? You know, the big old face statues, that are like, groovier than groovy. Anyways, here is a CNN article describing natural and human elements that might keep us from appreciating ancient art. Click here.

So I guess 10 million millionaires are running around. I'm not even one tenth of the way there as of this month, maybe one percent or so. That's how history goes, I guess it's better than in the 1890's when 95% of the people owned 90% of the wealth. Anyways, if you want details click here.

So the naked cowboy. Who I feel is the ying to the yang of Venice's Harry Parry (u know the turbin wearing roller blading guitar play in venice, ca). Anyways he's suing M&M's for having a half naked M&M in one of their commercials wearing a white cowboy hat, and white socks. Which I guess is his trademark. But seriously, if I like wore a white cowboy hate and white socks and wrote like the great American novel, would he sue me for stealing his vibe? I dunno, seems kinda bleh. Maybe he wasn't getting enough through his pseudo-panhandling. There is a CNN article with some more facts, click here.

I got married before him, back in March. But....CNN didn't do an article about it. See how the white liberal media is keeping me, the white man, down? LAWLS.. congrats ruben. At least somebody will see your penis. heh, cuz he's fat, right?

I thought I was hip, and cool, and neat, but I didn't know what RTFM meant, I read it on some bigshot's blog. Someone who makes the big adsense money. So I googlied it, and got the ever reliable citeable source of wikipedia. guess it means 'Read the effin' manual'. well you know what I mean. And I laughed. Oh man, those were the good times. I tell you what.

682 million dollars. That's what Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has made. I don't even make 25 cents an hour. Mario Lopez is selling like M&M ice cream. I'm sure he got something for that. I'll eat ice cream for money. Damn.